Hard drive problems.

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blacklotus90

So I have a USB 250GB external Maxtor OneTouch drive which I use to
store a lot of my documents and data as well as backup and restoration
stuff. It has been working fine for about 2.5-3 years. It is a FAT32
drive and it does not have an OS on it

The other day my computer crashed, and when it started back up, it went
through just like normal, got past the boot screen, but then froze on
the black screen between boot and login. I disconnected the hard drive,
and everything started working and worked perfectly. That is, until I
plugged in the drive. As soon as I plugged it in, Windows slowed to a
crawl. Before the crash, the drive was named "Stuff", but when my
computer finally detected it, it was just called Local Disk (E:).
Whenever I tried to click or right click on it in Explorer/My Computer,
Explorer would become Not Responding until I ended it or disconnected
the drive. Once I disconnect the drive everything works fine.

In Disk Management, the drive is listed as having 100% free space
(233.7GB). Frustrated, I tried Safe Mode, but that did not help.

I tried plugging the disk into another computer, and the exact same
thing happened.

I have a CD called Hiren's BootDisk, which contains about 100
commercial and professional recovery and diagnostic utilities. I ran a
few of the disk rescue/checking utilities on the bootdisk, and they
detected both the partition and the files just fine, as if nothing was
wrong. A lot of precious data is on this drive, so I have to get it
working again.

Please Help!
 
blacklotus90 said:
So I have a USB 250GB external Maxtor OneTouch drive which I use to
store a lot of my documents and data as well as backup and restoration
stuff. It has been working fine for about 2.5-3 years. It is a FAT32
drive and it does not have an OS on it

The other day my computer crashed, and when it started back up, it went
through just like normal, got past the boot screen, but then froze on
the black screen between boot and login. I disconnected the hard drive,
and everything started working and worked perfectly. That is, until I
plugged in the drive. As soon as I plugged it in, Windows slowed to a
crawl. Before the crash, the drive was named "Stuff", but when my
computer finally detected it, it was just called Local Disk (E:).
Whenever I tried to click or right click on it in Explorer/My Computer,
Explorer would become Not Responding until I ended it or disconnected
the drive. Once I disconnect the drive everything works fine.

In Disk Management, the drive is listed as having 100% free space
(233.7GB). Frustrated, I tried Safe Mode, but that did not help.

I tried plugging the disk into another computer, and the exact same
thing happened.

I have a CD called Hiren's BootDisk, which contains about 100
commercial and professional recovery and diagnostic utilities. I ran a
few of the disk rescue/checking utilities on the bootdisk, and they
detected both the partition and the files just fine, as if nothing was
wrong. A lot of precious data is on this drive, so I have to get it
working again.
Click to expand...

And you didn't burn the precious data to DVD or CD? An external hard drive
is just a hard drive and can die like any other hard drive.

Since the Hiren's utilities show the partition and files just fine, boot
your computer with either Knoppix (a Linux distro that runs from cd) or a
Bart's PE and see if you can access the files on the external drive that
way. If you can, burn the data to DVD/CD-R. Then you can format the
external drive and start over without losing the data.

Malke
 
I don't have the knoppix LiveCD, but I do have the Ubuntu LiveCD, that
should work just as well, right?
 
blacklotus90 said:
I don't have the knoppix LiveCD, but I do have the Ubuntu LiveCD, that
should work just as well, right?
Click to expand...

It should. I'm just more familiar with Knoppix as a rescue system. I use KDE
and K3b for burning, and I'm sure that Ubuntu has that, too.

Malke
 
blacklotus90 said:
I don't have the knoppix LiveCD, but I do have the Ubuntu LiveCD, that
should work just as well, right?
Click to expand...

Just to add...If this is the backup, then where are the
originals? A backup implies that there exists a *minimum*
of 2 copies or sets of the same material, not necessarily
in the same media. To avoid a repetition of this exercise,
always keep the originals and, to be on the safe side, 2
backup copies around. (Malke is correct...an external HD
can crash just as easily as an internal HD.)
 
Thanks for the advice, I used Knoppix to backup the data to DVD's
(Ubuntu was having fits about my video card) and then reformatted the
drive as an NTFS drive. It works great now, and seems faster.
 
blacklotus90 said:
Thanks for the advice, I used Knoppix to backup the data to DVD's
(Ubuntu was having fits about my video card) and then reformatted the
drive as an NTFS drive. It works great now, and seems faster.
Click to expand...

I'm so glad you got it sorted. Thanks for letting us know the outcome. Don't
forget to burn your data to DVD's occasionally!

Malke
 
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